Pages: 15 Years of Art and Writing 6
DIONNE CUSTER EDWARDS, DIRECTOR OF LEARNING & PUBLIC PRACTICE
Creating Pages 15 years ago was an opportunity for me to take what I had learned in the field as a teaching artist in community-based contexts and cultural institutions and develop a framework informed by those experiences. Pages works in service of K–12 education, and in conceptualizing this program, the aim was to create more depth. The intention was to no longer walk in and out of those classrooms and not be accountable for, tethered to, and inspired by what happened there. Pages was designed to create a space that allowed more time to work with artists, educators, and students in schools— an environment where the arts and academics could intersect, blend, and shape new dimensions for teaching and learning. Pages offers high school students the ability to engage with the arts and the practice of creative writing, both at the Wex and inside of their school curricula and settings. The interaction between these realms is a crucial one, as Stacey O’Reilly, Pages educator in residence at Big Walnut High School, observes:
“Required creative writing provides students the time and a place to get to better know themselves, which also allows them to discover what they believe and what is worth fighting for.…Creative writing and essay writing are not mutually exclusive. One can and does support the other. Just as we search for supplemental readings in support of the novels we study in class, the Pages program helped me as a teacher to find supplemental writings in support of student learning.” Committed to supporting the expansion of the arts in education, Pages is a multivisit, multiple-points-of-contact program, an intervention transforming how we think about and practice writing through ongoing, unexpected encounters. In addition to attending an exhibition, film, and performance at the Wex, during each program year students meet writers and artists—people who make things, who think about the world and translate that thinking into art. Pages is curious about whether arts learning in and out of conventional settings might allow for educators and students to teach, think, learn, and write differently—echoing the processes and curiosities of artists. Pages pushes toward a more flexible learning environment that offers educators and students more options. It is a yearlong journey, an ever-changing and layered community of ideas, participants, and activities—a partnership that includes schools, educators, students, artists, and the Wex. That sustained commitment to partnership is the fundamental structure, function, and reason behind the program’s success.
